


After All This Time

by Anon_M



Series: Light at the End of the Tunnel [1]
Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Not Related, Fluff, Homesickness, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, lonely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 14:33:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14046369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anon_M/pseuds/Anon_M
Summary: Erik Killmonger was silent as he sat in the throne room, dark eyes staring at the ground, following the cracks in the floor.T’Challa would not give up a kingdom for a love affair that could end with a single word.Falling in love felt like raindrops, like movie nights, like the light in Erik’s laughter when he missed a shot.“Come with me.”All of the rage, the fear, the love, it was worth it. Even after all this time.





	After All This Time

Erik Killmonger was silent as he sat in the throne room, dark eyes staring at the ground, following the cracks in the floor.

It had been months since he had been home, months since he had seen his apartment since he had slept in his own bed.

It had been weeks since T’Challa had come to visit him, and yet he sat only feet away from him now.

All dark skin and royalty, staring down at him with a sadness that Erik could feel through his skin and into his bones. The lack of speech between them felt like a physical attack, heartbreak taking apart his resolve piece by piece until he was forced to speak.

“Where were you?’”

The pain dripped from his voice like the tears he spilled over his father as a child, over the body in his living room, over the abandonment.

T’Challa was quiet, fingers tapping on the stone of his throne, the sun lowering behind him.

“Where have you been, T? Did you really expect me to just let you come home and leave me here? It’s been weeks and nothing. Not a word from you or Shuri or even Nakia. I’ve been looking at the ceiling of the cell all this time and now you let me out to be your toy?” Erik paused to take a breath, a controlling breath that would ease his anger.

“Nah, you’re not using me, enough of that. All or nothing, T. Either you want me or you don't.”

Moments passed before T’Challa looked at him, the devastation on his face so clear that Erik was shaken, his determined anger almost lessened. Almost.

“You know that I want you.”

Erik stood, making his way up to the throne, inches away from T’Challa’s face.

“It’s gonna take more than few words to prove to me that you’re not gonna just hop out on me again.” As he said these words, the stress from the last few weeks weighed on him like bricks, as if the pull him down to the earth.

“I know.”

➤➤➤

The fields of Wakanda were green and fertile, thunderclouds rolling away with the wind pushing over grass.

High overhead was the sun, shining hotly and burning as hot as the tension between them.

T’Challa said almost nothing as he walked into the ship, Shuri ignoring his mood and chatting away about her findings.

“All of our new and improved technology can be used in real now, everything is ready.”

His fingers trailed over the counter as he walked, taking in all of the blue, silver and black that came with vibranium.

“I am going back to California.”

It took a moment for Shuri to answer, her expression blank as she took in the words.

“For Erik?”

The rumble of machines ran quietly in the background as he nodded.

His sister knew of the relationship building itself between them, of the walls that T’Challa had to construct between himself and his mother, between him and his people.

They would accept his choice, as Nakia and Shuri had, and yet he was being selfish.

He was going silent for his own happiness, his privacy that he felt as though he didn’t deserve.

“When will you come home?”

There was no answer to this question, no honest response that he was willing to give. The thought of renouncing the throne had come to his mind, the want to provide Erik with a stability he never had, to put him as a priority had nearly driven him to give up his kingdom.

Yet, T’Challa would not give up a kingdom for a love affair that could end with a single word.

So he had to ask himself, which was more selfish: falling in love, or forcing himself to fall out of it?

After all, this time, had falling for someone been the thing that had been his downfall?

➤➤➤

Erik’s smile as he dribbled his basketball rivaled the sun, brightly shining in a way that he could feel T’Challa smiling back at him.

“You’re terrible at this.”

The king laughed as he watched Erik shoot the ball, with a swish to follow.

“Let’s just say that we didn’t have hoops in our bedrooms growing up.”

They played on the court for hours, Erik sharing stories and T’Challa working his way back into trust.

As night fell, Erik pulled T’Challa up the stairs of the apartment building, into their room by his fingertips.

“What are you doing?” The king was smiling, a warmth replacing his anxiety for the first time in months.

“Change, there’s a lotta movies we gonna get through tonight.”

With the moon starting its’ climb high into the sky and the sun completing its descent, they both made their way into the living room.

Erik played movie after movie that he grew up watching, explaining simple things that T’Challa was never exposed to.

After all this time, they were showing each other an innocent side of the way they lived. Without argument, without war, without violence.

It was a quiet breath, and a head on a chest. Warm laughter and new memories that neither let go of.

After all this time, the stillness between was not so cold. It was domestic, pure, with a hint of homesickness.

It had taken a long time for the Wakandan king to accept that falling in love felt different than he imagined. It didn’t feel like Nakia’s lips on his, it didn’t feel like their missions together.

It felt like smooth coffee going down his throat in Erik’s apartment, like the cool air Los Angeles in the fall, like the red leave falling in Virginia when they visited the capitol.

Falling in love felt like raindrops, like movie nights, like the light in Erik’s laughter when he missed a shot.

It had taken a long time for T’Challa to realize that he had fallen in love, is deeply and effortlessly that he hadn’t even noticed the butterflies until a first kiss.

That memory had taken him by surprise, and Erik’s rapidly changed demeanor swept him off his feet in only a moment.

Happiness was a new, and exciting factor in both their lives that they had been so deprived of.

The feeling of brilliant happiness was raw, a sweet endurance of pain had led them to this life.

The pain they had been through had led them here, to their kitchen where they stood making pancakes.

After all this time, true happiness had found them, just as trouble had for years.

➤➤➤

“So you’re going back to Wakanda?”

Erik was saddened by having to speak that sentence, fear weighing on his chest.

T’Challa had been with him, there in Oakland, for nearly a year. He fulfilled his kingly duties through video calls with Shuri, through phone calls with his mother, through missions with Tony Stark.

Eventually, Erik knew, something would force him back to his country, to his people, and yet there was barely veiled desolate expression placed itself on the face of the outsider.

“There is war, Shuri called me home.”

They sat on the couch, T’Challa’s careful eyes trained on him with anxiety.

Erik wasn’t angry like he had always thought he would be. For months he had thought of this day when they would sit down to speak about the fact that one of them was a king, and that the other would never be a priority.

Perhaps all these months with the soft-spoken, kind king had softened him and quelled some of the rage trapped inside of him.

He had spent years with that rage, storing it inside himself until nothing else could fit, until there was no room for joy, or happiness, or fear. The shock of not being furious stunned him into silence, the lack of a fearful outburst unsettling him after the years of the outcome.

If not the rage-filled soldier, who was he?

He wasn’t angry, not like he had expected to be.

Instead, a small place of emptiness that he hadn’t realized had been filled, opened up again.

A lonely feeling crept its way back into his demeanor, a lonely feeling stole the happiness that he had been reveling in for the past ten months.

“Come with me.”

Those words froze Erik in his place, his blood running slow in his veins.

In his mind, Wakanda was a prison, a life he could never truly be a part of.

Yet, T’Challa had said three words that had the power to change his mind in an instant.

“They hate me there.”

T’Challa wasted no time in kissing him as if one moment Erik was talking and the next the thought was gone from his mind.

“They will learn to love you.”

With those words, he stood and went to pack his things. More words were left unspoken, and neither was willing to say them. Questions swirled in Erik’s head, doubts and fears forcing their way to the forefront of his mind.

Erik sat for a minute or two, contemplating leaving this apartment, this town that never thought anything of him.

Again, he thought, maybe I’m going soft.

His mind had been made up before T’Challa had stood.

Even after all this time, after all these months, this quiet life wouldn’t be enough.

A life with a king, as a soldier, as an outsider, was better than nothing at all.

After all this time, Erik would fight, but now to prove himself to people, not to himself.

➤➤➤

T’Challa missed Wakanda, he realized. The sunsets, the green, the warmth of home, he had missed it while he was away.

Yet, he hadn’t felt the homesickness for the fields as he did for the streets of Oakland, of the rundown bars and local coffee shops. The ache in his chest reminded him of movie marathons and no responsibilities, an experience that was impossible in his homeland.

He could the eyes of his people on him as he and Erik stepped out of the ship.

Shri greeted him with a hug and a smile to light up the globe.

“I’ve missed you, Brother.”

He smiled in response, his sister lifting his spirits, “We have talked every day, how could you miss me?”

Erik trailed behind them as they walked up to the throne room, glancing around the country that hated him even though his heritage traced back to the same grounds.

T’Challa knew of the discomfort Erik felt, could feel it himself. The fear of rejection, of being hated and persecuted hung between them like a noose. 

After all this time, the fear still controlled them, the fear within them dictating their actions, dictating their pride.

They were still encased in secrecy, a secret so pure and untainted by the poison of hate that it would be a sin to expose it.

So, the secret was kept still.


End file.
